An Aug. 21, 2025, press release announced the African American Art & Culture Complex (AAACC)’s longtime coexecutive directors, Melonie and Melorra Green, have stepped down “to pursue new ventures after a remarkably productive eight-year tenure.” AAACC’s board of directors has brought on Niquole Esters, “a highly experienced nonprofit professional,” to serve as interim director of the center. The board also announced it will launch an open, publicly noticed executive search for AAACC’s next permanent director this fall.
The glowing missive was written by P.J. Johnston, who sits on AAACC’s board (listed on their latest 990 as “parliamentarian”). If Johnston’s name sounds familiar, he also chaired London Breed’s reelection campaign and is a longtime friend and confidant. The Green sisters, who are twins, are not only close friends of Breed’s, but they also live next door to her in that infamous rent-controlled apartment on Page Street.
AAACC received over $5 million from Dream Keeper Initiative even after it violated state law by accepting millions of dollars in city funds while being legally barred from doing so.
AAACC took in a whopping $5,388,750 from the scandal plagued Dream Keeper Initiative, cosponsored by then Mayor Breed and District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, which took over $120 million from the San Francisco Police Department to “redistribute” to the Black community in the form of grants — an idea that I said in 2023 was “ripe for grift and cronyism.” AAACC received those funds even after it violated state law by accepting millions of dollars in city funds while being legally barred from doing so — the organization was listed as “delinquent” on the state’s Registry of Charitable Trusts. Records showed they failed for years to “renew their registration, pay fees, and submit forms documenting revenue and spending with the state Attorney General’s Office.” AAACC ignored filing requirements or had its registration renewals rejected for incomplete information and underpayment from 2018 until just before they received the Dream Keeper grant, and it’s entirely likely Breed helped bring them into compliance so they would be eligible.
A nonprofit classified as delinquent for more than a year can have its nonprofit status suspended. The California attorney general’s office sent a notice saying it intended to suspend AAACC in 2017, but the organization sent in renewal forms, which brought it back into compliance. However, they fell back into delinquency in 2019.
According to the San Francisco Standard, former Mayor Breed’s office defended grants given to AAACC. “The city has a long history with the African American Art and Culture Complex that predates Mayor Breed — they do great work,” Parisa Safarzadeh, then a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, told the Standard in 2023.
Breed’s mentor, Willie Brown, helped launch her political career by putting her in charge of AAACC in 2012. She ran the organization for more than a decade, and her campaign website credited her with “transforming the struggling center into a vital, financially-stable community resource that provides after-school arts and cultural programs for youth and seniors.”
First elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2012, Breed was elected by her fellow supervisors as president of the board in January 2015. She was reelected to the board in 2016 and reelected unanimously as president in January 2017, the same year the Green sisters took over AAACC, no doubt with influence from their friend Breed. Once they became codirectors of AAACC, the twins consistently supported Breed’s political ascent, contributing over $1,500 to her 2018 and 2019 mayoral campaigns. They also penned an op-ed publicly calling for her reelection, a form of lobbying that nonprofits are not permitted to do. That undying support went both ways — as a candidate and as an elected official, Breed stood by AAACC, making a $9,000 donation to her friends and neighbors, the Green sisters, from her 2016 Democratic Central Committee campaign, then terminated the committee on the very same day she made the payment.
According to their Form 990, for the fiscal year ending June 2023, AAACC had revenue of $4,451,109, expenses of $4,639,183, net income of -$188,074, and net assets of $1,010,773. Melorra Green made $99,604 while her sister Melonie took home $99,281.
